Australia’s best known playwright, David Williamson, has attacked the nation’s ‘‘huge’’ spending on sports while a ‘‘pittance’’ is spent developing the next Cate Blanchett or Geoffrey Rush.

Williamson has also taken aim at the funding being ‘‘ripped’’ from TAFE, costing 800 teaching positions in NSW alone, with fine arts ‘‘predictably’’ among the casualties, while Melbourne was set to lose a valuable creative arts program.

The barbarians are not just at the gate, but in power.

‘‘The overall cost of our Olympic gold medals was in excess of $17 million dollars per medal but that was thought to be not nearly enough investment by many who oversee our elite sports institutions,’’ said Williamson, delivering the 2012 National Tertiary Education Union lecture in Fremantle.

‘‘Why as a society we think it’s legitimate to spend huge amounts on our sportsmen and women, but seemingly don’t think the relative pittance we spend on developing a potential Cate Blanchett or Geoffrey Rush is as justifiable, has to say something about our national and political priorities.’’

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The former Sydneysider, whose new play Happiness premieres at the Ensemble in May and his play Rupert, about media baron Rupert Murdoch, at the Melbourne Theatre Company in August, now lives in Queensland, where ‘‘the barbarians are not just at the gate, but in power’’.

Williamson, in his lecture Living Dangerously: The Future of Creative Arts Education in Australian Universities, said the new premier, Campbell Newman, had transformed the state into a ‘‘developers’ paradise’’, while abolishing the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards, ‘‘which cost the relatively trivial amount of quarter of a million dollars’’.

But the playwright also took aim at other states: in Victoria, the Baillieu Government had sliced $35 million from Swinburne University of Technology’s budget as part of a general $290 million cut to TAFE in Victoria.

‘‘Swinburne is being forced to plan the closure of its Prahran campus, home to its creative arts program, which in terms of graduates being employed in the arts industry, has been one of the most successful in the country,’’ Williamson said.

‘‘Where are our future cameramen, directors, set and lighting designers, choreographers and makeup artists for television, film and stage meant to spring from? It seems, in that phrase invented by Shakespeare, the greatest artist of all time, ‘thin air’.’’

In NSW, meanwhile, some 800 TAFE jobs are ‘‘slated to go and the casualties, predictably, are fine arts and ceramics’’.

‘‘Creative courses on university campuses are under just as much threat, but here it’s not the bloody minded anti-arts mentality of conservative state governments that’s to blame but the gradual python squeeze of less and less university funding for which the Federal Government must take the blame,’’ he said.

‘‘Despite increases in university funding by the Labor Government, these increases have not kept up with inflation or increasing student load and in essence our universities are asked to do more with less.

‘‘Funding levels for higher education have dipped to just 0.7 percent of GDP as against the OECD average of 1 percent.’’

‘‘Skimping’’ on higher education was partly to do with ‘‘political cowardice’’, he said.

‘‘It’s OK to have white papers on us integrating ourselves with Asia in the ‘Asian century’ and tell us we’re all to learn Asian languages, as long as there are absolutely no plans to actually do anything.’’

Yet the arts sector contributes $30 billion a year to the GDP, more than agriculture, forestry and fishing combined, said Williamson.

‘‘Funding in a university flows from the number of students you teach and how effective you are as a research institution,’’ he said.

‘‘Many faculties have responded to funding pressures by decreasing the staff student ratio. Tutorials of a dozen were commonplace thirty years ago, now the normal size is thirty. While this has decreased the effectiveness of teaching in all faculties, it’s still possible in most of them to get an acceptable outcome.

‘‘In creative pursuits, however, learning is only partly possible by discussion; it’s actually doing the activity, and getting precise and informed feedback from talented teacher-practitioners that enables a student to flourish.’’

Williamson said the new national curriculum would be weakened by a lack of funding, despite the welcome emphasis on arts.

‘‘The success of the national arts curriculum is being hamstrung by the lack of qualified music, drama dance and art teachers,’’ he said.

‘‘Great arts teachers can work wonders in introducing our kids to the joys of the arts.

‘‘But teachers without sufficient specialist training in teaching music, theatre, dance or drama are equally good at torpedoing the artistic talents and passions of young people. We urgently need to lift the level of arts training that primary teachers get. We desperately need to produce more specialist arts teachers for our high schools.

‘‘But the reality is that many of the higher education institutions which should be producing these teachers are being specifically targeted for budget cuts.

‘‘Put simply, we are not going to have the teachers to teach the national arts curriculum. That is plain dumb.’’

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67 comments so far

At last. Someone of note comes out and tells it like it is.

A visitor to QLD could be forgiven for thinking that culture consisted of rugby league, the Broncos and State of Origin. Here we have insurance companies and banks which use league players as mascots for their products notwithstanding their numerous vile on and off-field discretions. Using arts heroes for this? Unheard of. It's about as bogan as you can get.

Commenter

Petero

Location

Red Hill

Date and time

November 15, 2012, 9:52PM

How does the arts plan to tackle the issue of child hood obesity and the management of chronic diseases? Maybe the reason our governments invests in sports is to encourage a healthy and active life style.

Commenter

Ryan

Location

Sydney

Date and time

November 16, 2012, 9:01AM

Are you all serious? The percentage of breakthrough artists whether it be music, acting or artwork is so miniscule that you are pandering to the 1% and a bunch of feel good hippys who want to remain in TAFE courses for the rest of their lives. How many accomplished actors have come through the TAFE system? As opposed to say NIDA or any other performing arts school.

Sorry that investing sport is so wrong it only promotes physical development, teamwork and creates unity within communities through local support and projects.

But hey don't let that get in the way of a good story...the arts what a load of nonsense

Commenter

El Seano

Location

Date and time

November 16, 2012, 9:28AM

Thank you DavidOur State and Fed governments are a source of shame. More people attended live music last year in melbourne than sports events but sports always gets more and more, and arts get less and less. It is shameful to have such culturally backwards government.

Commenter

T1

Location

Melbourne

Date and time

November 15, 2012, 10:01PM

Sport has become the new religion : a handful of elite athletes supported on government largesse, while the rest of the population is relegated to being armchair spectators, worshipping their idols. Thanks to the government, the elite few later become millionaires through sponsorship and media deals - with little or no real payback to the economy. We now have 3 generations obsessed with sporting trivia and even the fortunes of footballers and their partners and families are treated as royalty in the media.

Yet these people have nothing intelligent or original to say, it produces nothing of lasting value and is palpably dumbing-down society.

The worst is that most sports have become so focussed on competition that there is no way for "ordinary" people to participate for social reasons of just for fun; either the sport has died (eg. bowling clubs), the facilities incredibly limited, or have become a financial arms-race (motor sports, sailing or even golf) in which only the rich can afford to participate regularly.

Yes, the arts could benefit from more funding - but there is another culture which you could be forgiven for thinking does not exist in this country - the sciences and engineering. These have been steadfastly ignored for decades despite their contributions to society and the economy, and the ongoing emigration of our best to other countries who value such people rather more highly than this country.

Commenter

wx88

Location

Sydney

Date and time

November 16, 2012, 12:36AM

I'd like to see some kind of source for his figure that the "arts sector" contributes $30 billion to the Australian economy, I looked and couldn't find one. And with the gold medal argument, should we judge publically funded films by how many Oscars they win? The Australia Council spends around $200 million a year in grants after all, surely we should get some Academy Awards for that?

Personally I'd like to see more money for arts and sport at a local, grassroots level and less for primadonna swimmers and cliquish artists with vanity projects. At the end of the day though, it's primarily the kind of people Mr Williamson dismisses as "barbarians" who pay for all this via taxes. If they would prefer to see some kid ploughing up and down a pool than another "quirky" Australian drama then are they not entitled to make that choice?

Commenter

rl

Location

colombo

Date and time

November 16, 2012, 1:22AM

Refer to page 6 of the 'Creative Industries Economic Analysis' at enterpriceconnect.gov.au. It bases its calcutions on IBIS World Estimates. Similarly the 'Creative Economy Report Card 2010' produced by the Queensland University of Technology's ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation gives a full summary of facts. All could be found on the internet

Commenter

Jon

Location

Date and time

November 16, 2012, 9:43AM

Thanks, I read that. It seems that they have a very broad view of what they consider the "creative industries". Which is fine, but it seems disingenuous to then go on and call this the "arts sector" in the context of this article while still including things like software, architecture and marketing. If we're talking about fine arts, lets hear how much contribution fine arts make, not a broad category which includes them.

Commenter

rl

Location

colombo

Date and time

November 16, 2012, 6:03PM

How about too much money is spent on both art and sport? Why should the government be funding either. I say let individuals and businesses donate or sponsor the arts or sporting teams. We then get a true indication of what our society wants instead of having these battles for government funding.

Commenter

Donate

Location

Date and time

November 16, 2012, 1:30AM

Agree with Williamson - I think a greater percentage of money should be spent on scientific research, education, and health as opposed to sport. Funding in Australia today is very short-sighted and nationalistic, not enough thought on our future.